Wilson completes 100-mile run on Bighorns

The Bighorn Mountain Trail 100 is an epic mountain endurance running adventure that crosses through the Little Bighorn and Tongue River areas of the Bighorn National Forest, and Cleve Wilson of Lovell recently completed the distance and crossed the finish line.
Participants have 35 hours to navigate the hundred miles on the remote, out-and-back course where Mother Nature provides more than 20,500 feet of ascent and 20,750 feet of descent, testing the most seasoned ultra-runners.
The course includes 76 miles of technical single-track trail, 16 miles of rugged two-track jeep trail road and eight miles of gravel road.
This year, 340 runners started the race, and only 195 were able to finish in the allotted time, including Wilson.

How it began
The average person would think he was crazy to attempt such a feat, but when Wilson began running over the years, his passion and determination grew and motivated him to try.
“Six years ago, my wife ran the 18-mile race on the mountain,” Wilson said. “I went and watched her and thought I would give it a shot.”
The following year, Wilson attended and completed the 32-mile course but afterwards felt like he could have gone further.
“I was proud of myself for making it 32 miles, but all I could think about was how there were more people still going further than me and how I thought I had more in my tank,” Wilson said.
So, last year he signed up and ran the 52-mile race to test his theory.
After finishing that distance, the fact that there were still others going further continued to trigger his competitiveness and determination to push his limits.
“I think your body will go a lot further than your mind will let you,” he claimed. “I had to try.”
Wilson hired local fitness guru Jesseca Cross and came up with a running program that began immediately after the 52-mile event so that he trained for a full year in preparation.
Even though he wanted to give it a try, he still needed his family’s blessing before making such a long-term commitment.
“I really felt the need to make sure my family was on board with this decision because of the time commitment it took to train,” he said. “The last three months, I was always gone running. … I would get off work and then go run all night.”
With the support of his family and friends, Wilson made his dream a reality June 14-15.

The race
The course was divided into six sections, and Wilson and his crew had a plan for how he should attack each portion.
The race started at 9 a.m. on Friday and took him 34 hours and 39 minutes to complete.
Each runner had designated “pacers” or individuals that helped during certain stretches to set the pace and provide encouragement along the way.
Wilson enlisted the help of his wife Kim and friends Ty Harrison (originally Pat Steed until he had his appendix rupture), Wes Wilkerson and Levi Miller for the task.
He said he seemed to be moving well through the first couple of check points before he started getting sick around the 40-mile mark.
“I didn’t fuel very well on the second leg, so I didn’t have any energy, and when I did try to fuel, I couldn’t keep it down,” Wilson said.
“Poor Ty had to babysit me the whole way up,” he said of that rough stretch. “He would tell me, ‘We just have to get to the check point, because your wife is there, and she will fix you.’”
When he did walk into the station that night, it was raining and cold, and Wilson told his wife to take off his bib and turn it in to the officials because he wasn’t going to finish.
Kim provided the reassurance, strength and support he needed to not give up and push through the pain.
After taking some extra time to regroup and rest, it was Wilkerson up next to get them back on track and make up for the lost time.
The two ran under 15-minute miles for the whole 18-mile segment.
“That whole time all I could think was if I can make it to Levi and my wife, I will be able to finish the race because Millers won’t let you quit,” he said of the cousin duo.
Knowing that time was still a factor, the final transition from Levi to Kim as his pacer was similar to that of a NASCAR pit stop with his crew.
Wilson laid out flat on the ground, and his helpers took off his shoes and socks, changed them out, fed him and gave him water before sending him back on his way within seven minutes, and Kim helped propel him to the end.
“I am more proud of my pacers than I am of myself,” Wilson said. “These guys aren’t runners but trained and put in all of their time to help me, and I wasn’t going to let them down or have wasted their efforts on my behalf.”
“There’s no way I could have done it without them,” he added. “When I wanted to quit, I just thought about what all they had done for me.”
Another driving thought was his kids.
“I tell my kids all the time that they can do hard things, and I don’t want to teach them that it’s OK to quit when it gets hard,” he said.
He had a tracker on his location throughout the race that allowed others to check-in on his progression over the course.
As more and more people logged on to see if he was still going, it gave him additional motivation.
“I am just this ordinary dad that lives an ordinary life and goes to work every day that decided he was going to go try and run 100 miles, and I did it,” he said. “It just shows that you can do anything you put your mind to.”
During the race, Wilson lost 15 pounds, and he took the following Monday off from work to recuperate, but other than one of his knees aching, he was right back to his normal routine on Tuesday with minimal pain.
“This experience helped me learn to be more patient and proved that people can do a lot tougher things than they think they can,” he said. “If you can trick your mind, your body will carry you through it.”
Wilson shared his appreciation to his pacers, family and friends for this support on this journey and concluded by saying, “I would like to say that I’ll never do this again, but everybody that knows me knows I probably will.”